Corporate heels

Sunday, April 28, 2013

She regarded the great being in front of her with some trepidation.
It towered before her, regal, rugged, breathtakingly beautiful... all at once.
She caught a light whiff of smoke and took a step back when she realized, it came from the nostrils of the fire breathing beast, who seemed to be regarding her back with a sombre expression.
For a moment she felt a terror that excluded her from all else...

The noises behind her suddenly jarred her back to her predicament.
The forest rustled with sounds of the demons she had been trying to outrun, before entering this magical clearing.
The beast heard them too and raised its fearsome head to take in the sudden restlessness of its habitat.
In her mind's eye, she could see the first of the demons breaking the thick cover of trees behind her, inching surreptously towards her...
The beast turned slightly, till it was facing her, looking down upon the trembling form of the lost soul that she was.
As the fiery red eyes, reminicient of eternity, met her mere mortal gaze, the clock was broken, for but fraction of a moment, with the weight of her choice; the choice between the demons she knew as well as herself and this unknown unbelievable terror...
Time resumed on its course and with it, hers was chosen too.
Just as the demon's slithery arms brushed her black cloak, she reached out towards the flowing white mane of her beast of choice, and swung onto its back.
The beast in turn, spread its mighty wings with a surprisingly soft ruffle, and with a contrasting mighty roar, rose up towards the orange dawn sky. The speed left her disoriented and faint but the wind that ripped through her, woke up her very soul, as she watched her demons staring up gaping, before being eternalised in a cloud of fire raining down from the nostrils of the accelerating beast...

Friday, April 26, 2013

He saw her over his glass of scotch, sitting at the bar nursing a glass of red wine. The scarlet liquid paid a perfect complimet to the pair of delicious lips it passed through. Something about that simple act of raising her glass and taking a delicate sip, sent him to a surreal wood of scented ponds, gracious nymphs and salvation...

She noticed him staring at her with an open intensity that evoked a reaction far from the usual disdain that she reserved for the roving eyes of bored businessmen in bars like these.
Something about those passionate dark eyes made her leave her half full glass of wine on the counter as she got up, rather unsteadily...

The chink of glass on wood brought his thoughts back to the indifferent bar. He saw the object of his very recent fantasies walking towards him and just couldn't look away, no matter how hard he tried.
She didnt stop, but walked past him, her soft arm brushing ever so lightly against his wiry one, sending shock and temptation surging through them both.
He got up and followed her, like that was what he had been destined to do. She didnt stop him when he got into the elevator with her or when he got off at the 13th floor behind her, not even, when he pushed aside the door of her room and walked right in, taking her in his arms, crushing her against himself.
It was like rediscovering an ancient comnection.. no words were needed between them.
They fell on the bed, together, kissing biting tearing at each other, like a hungry lion let loose in a meat factory.
They devoured one another in that moment of liquid heat.
The second time was slower.. they rediscovered each other.. the hidden cranies.. the oblivious spots... the trapped sighs, till they finally fell asleep, exhausted, yet alive, with a peace neither had ever experienced.
She woke up to his arms enveloping her like a perfect cocoon, as if they had done this all their lives.
She slowly slid out, turning for just a moment to watch the first light of dawn casting a strangely familiar shadow across his face...
She sighed before slipping into her dress and walking out.
He woke up trapped in rumpled sheets and last night's dream..
There was no sign of her, except a single sheet of hotel stationary with the words...
"It was, but a moment, yet in that one moment, I forgot eternity...Luv"

Saturday, July 9, 2011

When I was a little kid, we used to live in a place called Hoshiarpur, near the Pubjab-Himachal border. It was a small town which took barely twenty minutes to cross from one end to the other by car.

Like most small towns in India, it had an old area called Krishna Nagar. And among its many snaky little streets was the narrow Street No. 7, where we lived.

There are a lot of things I remember about that street; the dilapidated old school next door, with the crippled brown tree and soft pink roses; Hanuman, the pandit from the temple at the end of the street who always gave me an extra helping of my favourite prasad and waved to me from his rusty old bicycle as I waited for my school bus every morning and the huge, crazy German Shepherd who barked incessantly at everyone and for some reason had been named Pepsi.

But the one thing I remember most clearly was the excitement the rains brought with them. For whenever it rained heavily, the street would turn into a muddy river, like our own pet version of the mighty amazon. And there I would sit on the once-glazed steps of our home; under the blue door with the twin white peacocks, chipped and weary from the years they had been there. I would watch as strange creatures came out of the water, big cola coloured cockroaches that made my mother scream, worms as muddy as the water, driven out of their burrows by the onslaught and an occasional snake scare.

But nothing excited me as much as the sound of my mother's feet behind the door, for I knew they brought with them the reason I loved that muddy stream. For she had just taught me how to make paper boats and promised me if my boats were good enough they would travel far and wide and journey to strange, mythical lands I could only imagine.

And so I would sit there, my tiny fingers working tirelessly creating one little boat after another, praying all the while that they would pass God's test and not drown.

Some would be brave and strong and fight the torrent and make it round the bend of the street accompanied by my whoops of joy. But there were others, which despite my prayers failed to make it and sunk to their moving muddy graves. As I watched their tiny forms topple, my lips would quiver and my eyes well up, but my mother would hug me and urge me to let it go and would egg me on to make the next.

It was a tough lesson to learn... letting go and I had lot of trouble with it.

And today, even though I am a young woman of 24, somewhere that little girl still has her fingers crossed and her eyes closed every time she releases a boat into life's muddy waters, praying for it to get past the bend and every time one doesn't make it, it still breaks her heart...

Friday, July 8, 2011

Am I the girl who lost her footing and the love of her life, both in the same week?

The helpless freak grounded in her room staring at her patched roof, silently screaming for life to happen.

Or am I the crazy One-Legged Captain Crutches all set to hop her way to another adventure?

Free, alive and with ideas zooming like lightening bolts in her head?

So I closed my eyes and felt the wind whip my hair, and when I opened them, my crutches were my broomsticks and I was flying, high and higher, up beyond the clutches of the evil patched roof and sodden staircases. Up above the clouds, in a kingdom of colours, and oh! what a sight it was. The Red screamed to me from my left the Green waved with its easy grace, Blue flowed past like a musical fountain and Yellow was all smiles and whoops of joy.

I was alive at last... as this surreal world crashed into me and wiped out everything else, till I turned into a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, passions and dreams.

And thus I found myself again, in my narrow bed, not with empty questions and a present that refused to pass, but with a smile, a dream and the broomsticks to live it...